Half Past Midnight (29 page)

Billy smiled a bit.

“Go on, kid.”

He nodded and joined René and Gene. Together, the three of them disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 14
* * August 17 / 2:18 a.m. * *

Par grand dangiers le captif eschapé,
Peu de temps grand a fortune changee:
Dans le palais le peuple est attrapé,
Par bon augure la cité assiegee.

Through great dangers the captive escaped:
In a short time great his fortune changed.
In the palace the people are trapped,
Through good omen the city besieged.

Nostradamus –
Century 2, Quatrain 66

“Here we go again,” I thought, once more slipping through the shadows of Rejas. It took only a few minutes to retrace the route we had taken from the warehouse. Slipping inside, I looked around for Sarah. “Sarah?” I whispered. No response. I hadn’t really expected any.

I peered through the window again. The tank sat just outside the main entrance to the stadium. The hatches were open, and the spotlight shone on the street before the armored monster. Someone had rewired an old CD player and hooked it into the tank. An unknown rap group proclaimed their philosophy in barely intelligible English to a deafening thunder of bass.

“Beat yo’ woman ’til she scream, ’cause you know the bitch, she live fo’ it.”

Dozens of uniformed men thrashed and gyrated in the circle of light before the tank. Someone had found some booze, and most of them had a bottle of their preferred poison in hand. Several of the guards were milling around, joking with the tank’s crew and smoking. I wondered where they had found cigarettes, and just how desperate you had to be to smoke two-year-old tobacco. The scent of marijuana reached me about the time that I noticed the cigarettes were all hand rolled. Tobacco was a thing of the past around here, as the local climate wasn’t conducive to its growth. Cannabis was apparently not as selective in its climate.

I scanned the area for some sign of Sarah. Nothing.

I slipped the goggles on my head and turned the switch to infrared. The world of infrared disoriented me at first. Tiny dots danced around, flaring briefly before glowing red faces as the men toked, smoked, and joked. As I got used to it, I quit trying to focus on details, instead watching the larger picture. The men around the tank I could ignore for the time being. If they had seen Sarah, they surely wouldn’t be standing around partying.

I looked for other heat sources. The light on the tank, the trash can fires that were illuminating the area, the glowing red blob writhing inside the stadium that was the crowded mass of prisoners. Several guards still glowed where they patrolled outside the chain link fence that surrounded the football field.

“Come on, Sarah,” I muttered, “where the hell are you?”

My jaw dropped when I finally spotted her. It never would have worked with seasoned military troops. Hell, it never would have worked with any disciplined group, but these clowns were hardly disciplined. And they were obviously not observant enough to spot a single hidden hitchhiker lying flat on the pavement underneath the very tank they were partying around.

Truthfully though, if she hadn’t shown up as a heat source, I probably wouldn’t have seen her, either. The spotlight that brightened their impromptu dance floor left the night outside their oasis of light a solid, opaque black. Someone would have had to shine a light directly under the tank to spot her. From what I could see, there was no way for her to get any closer to the stadium without crossing in front of the perimeter guards.

Her dilemma was obvious. She would never make it any further without help, but neither could she retreat without being spotted. Unfortunately, the solution was just as obvious.

“Wonderful,” I muttered, “just freakin’ wonderful!”

I bolted out of the door and back into the darkness, this time heading away from the stadium for a block before cutting right and jogging down the next block parallel to Stadium Drive. I imagined how I would explain this one to Ken and Jim. “Well, guys, she was already under the tank. What else could I do?”

I seemed to recall that Jim had a distinct dislike for people who “dressed up like GI Joe” and went off “lookin’ for a war,” but I thought he just might understand this time.

I tried the door at the back of Outland Sales, but the relaxed security that Ken had shown me in the suburbs didn’t seem to extend to the business sector of town. I did manage to find an unbolted window though, and slipped inside. The building was empty, and dust rose in my footsteps as I searched for a window with the view I wanted. I found it and looked out onto the same party zone I had just left, only now I was about a block up the street.

I debated for a minute over whether to go for the lights or the tank crew first, then realized I would have a better chance of surviving this fiasco if I could take out the crew. They would be the ones most likely to know how to fire that cannon. After sliding the window open, I took careful aim at the thug sitting closest to the hatch. He was just beginning to lean back when my bullet found him. Before the others had a chance to react, I shot the second closest to the hatch. It became a scramble as the rest of them realized what was happening. I began firing at anyone who seemed to be heading to any of the hatches and got three more before any got in. Even then, one of them had to drag a bloody leg in after him. Once a couple of them made it in, I dropped a smoke bomb, fired a few shots in the general direction of the spotlight on the front of the tank, and ran like hell without bothering to see if I had hit anything.

I made it a block before they gathered themselves enough to attack the building. Bullets ripped through the sheet metal walls by the hundreds. I stopped behind the next building I came to.

Looking up, I found a fire escape leading to a third story roof, and I climbed up to watch the fun. I could see the group of them getting braver and braver as they continued firing and drew no response from the building. Nothing could have lived through the rain of bullets they poured into that warehouse.

Finally, the tank started up. It had evidently taken the poor slobs who had gotten into it this long to figure out how to start it. Slowly, it began to trundle down the street toward Outland Sales. I wondered if they would figure out how to fire the cannon. Then, as the tank left the scattered bodies on the street behind it, I saw one of them rise to its feet and run toward the chain link fence.

Sarah evidently still had her goggles on, because I saw her whirl and fire at one of the perimeter guards, dropping him before he ever raised his rifle. The single shot was lost in the ongoing volley that Larry’s men were still firing into the old warehouse.

She took the eight-foot fence in seconds and quickly disappeared into the crowd of prisoners.

“Good luck, girl,” I wished her fervently. “You’re sure gonna need it.”

***

“She did
what
?” Ken’s initial reaction was every bit as volatile as I had expected.

“Watch the road!” I yelled, as he turned to shout at me and swerved toward the shoulder. Mark’s group had managed to steal three more Humvees, and Ken’s group had gotten one of the covered personnel trucks from Main Street. That gave us four jeeps and a truck to use for hauling supplies. My group rode with Ken in the lead, me in front, and the others in back.

“She snuck into the stadium,” I told him. “There wasn’t anything I could do to stop her, Ken. By the time I found her, she was already committed. There was no way she could have made it back.”

“She made it in, didn’t she? How’d she manage that?”

This was the part I dreaded. “Um, I helped her.”

He laughed, though there wasn’t a shred of humor in him at the moment. “You helped her,” he repeated, as if savoring the taste of these strange words. He shook his head in amazement. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

There was nothing I could say to that, so we traveled along the road in uneasy silence. I glanced into the back to see the rest of my group sitting reticent, heads hung low, looking for all the world like children trying to avoid an angry parent’s attention.

After a few minutes, Ken seemed to calm down. “Tell me exactly what happened.” So I did, starting with when we had noticed Sarah was missing and ending with my return to the group.

“Do you have any idea what she had in mind? What we can expect her to do?”

I had thought about that ever since she had turned up missing. “She knows where the supplies are. She knows where our people are. And it just so happens they’re all in about the same place. I think it’s obvious.”

He sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of. How long before she’ll try it?”

I shrugged. “No way to know for sure. I doubt she’ll do anything with that tank out front, and the guards are going to be a
lot
more cautious after tonight’s shootout. If the tank stays during the day, she’ll definitely wait ’til night. If it’s still there come nightfall, she may wait another day. But the longer she waits, the greater the chance that she’ll get caught.” I thought about what I knew about Sarah. “Sarah isn’t one for subtlety. She’ll move as soon as she can. I’d bet on tomorrow night, or maybe the next.”

Ken nodded. “You’re sure no one saw her get in?”

“Pretty sure. There was one, but she got him before she went over the fence. Everyone else I saw was busy shooting at where they thought I was hiding.”

He was quiet again, thinking. “We’ll have to come back to help her bust them out.”

I sighed with relief.

***

In half an hour, we reached the bridge to the fertilizer plant, and Ken pulled to the side of the road and turned to the back.

“Billy, we need to send someone in on foot to let our people know that the vehicles coming in are friendly. Wouldn’t do to get shot by our own people. You mind?”

Dumbfounded, Billy just stared at Ken for several seconds. I realized this was probably the most that Ken had spoken to him since the day he had been brought to our door. It was perhaps a little gruff, but I think it was Ken’s way of apologizing. He was telling Billy that after what had happened tonight, he considered Billy an asset rather than a liability.

Billy nodded, leapt out of the back, and ran down the road.

“Hey, kid!” Ken yelled. Billy stopped and spun so abruptly that he nearly slipped on the pavement.

“Don’t get yourself shot. We’re going to need you tomorrow.”

Billy cracked a shy smile and sprinted across the bridge.

I turned to Ken. “That was damn near human of you, Ken.”

“Shut up, Lee.”

I shut up, smiling nonetheless.

***

When we finally pulled the vehicles into the parking lot of the Vogler Fertilizer Factory, a crowd had gathered to greet us. Word had spread as soon as Billy made it to the gate. Cindy and Debra were in the forefront, but we barely had time for a quick hug and a few reassurances before Jim herded us into his
office
. He had converted the office area of the plant into his personal staging area. Maps and charts from an age long gone decorated the walls. Electric lamps and fans lay piled in the corner, seen by the light of a couple of camping lanterns.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Ken and I collapsed into chairs in front of the desk. He was evidently every bit as exhausted as I was.

Jim took the seat opposite us, and I noticed that his left eye was a bit swollen from the punch I had given him in City Hall. “So what happened? I heard there was trouble.”

Ken nodded and began explaining in general what all had happened. At times, Jim or Ken would ask me to fill in some detail, but I tried to keep my mouth shut and let Ken do most of the talking. When he reached the point at which Sarah hopped the fence, I expected Jim to explode, but the mayor just sat there twiddling a pencil with his feet propped on the desk. It reminded me of the time he had questioned me after the Kindley affair. At least this time we were on the same side. The question and answer session went on for nearly an hour, with Jim asking dozens of questions to be sure he had the entire picture. Finally, he seemed satisfied.

“We figure she’ll make her move tomorrow night or the next,” Ken finished.

Jim sighed. “Well, I guess it’s really gonna hit the fan now, ain’t it?”

Ken and I were silent. No response seemed necessary.

Jim suddenly became animated. He dropped his feet off of the desk, stood up, and began pacing. “So what do we need to do to get our people out of there with as little risk as possible?”

“Let us send in some more volunteers tomorrow,” I jumped in. “Small groups like we did tonight. We can send them in a few at a time and have them set up to help her when she makes her move.”

“Ken?” Jim was the mayor, but he deferred to Ken just like the rest of us when it came to battlefield strategy.

Ken didn’t look happy with the situation, but had finally accepted the responsibility. “That’s about the only thing I can think of, too. But you have to understand something here.” He paused. “We’re going to lose some people, Jim. There’s no way around it.”

“How many?”

Ken shrugged wearily. “How many are going to panic under fire? How many are going to shoot when they should duck for cover, or duck for cover when they should shoot? We’re not talking about seasoned troops here. We’re talking about a bunch of auto mechanics and schoolteachers armed with deer rifles.

“They’re going up against guys with military grade hardware who have made killing into a way of life. On top of that, they have a tank sitting where our people will have to go right past it, and at least five others somewhere in town. Our only advantage is Sarah’s inside and knows where the supplies are, so we’ll have people shooting from inside
and
outside of the stadium. That will hopefully catch Larry’s boys with their pants down.” His tone left no doubt that he expected the worst.

I couldn’t help feeling that Ken was being overly pessimistic, though. Maybe it was because I had finally begun to feel like I fit in over the last year. Rejas was home, its people my friends and neighbors. They were people I had taught, worked with, and had now fought beside. We had been through a lot together, and I felt obligated to defend them against Ken’s pessimism. “Wait a sec. Let’s not forget that this last year has been pretty rough on everyone. Plenty of these folks have had to face armed outlaws on their own, and hundreds have trained with you, me, and Eric. They may not be soldiers, but they’re not your average businessman or housewife anymore, either.”